PDS Support

About the Small Bodies Node

The Small Bodies Node (SBN) of the Planetary Data System is a distributed node with expertise on comets, asteroids and interplanetary dust. The node data collection and verification activities are spread among several institutions specializing in particular bodies (comets, asteroids, or dust), while the main archives and user services are collected in a single place.

SBN Advisory Council

Dr. Daniel Britt

University of Central Florida

2003 -- present

Dr. Schelte "Bobby" Bus

University of Hawaii

2008 -- present

Dr. Anita L. Cochran

University of Texas

xxxx -- present

Dr. Yan Fernández

University of Central Florida

2008 -- present

Dr. Will Grundy

Lowell Observatory

2014 -- present

Dr. Sascha Kempf

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), Univ. of Colorado

2017 -- present

Dr. William Reach

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Facility (IPAC/Caltech)

2003 -- present

Our Subnodes

Comet Subnode

The Comet Subnode is located at the University of Maryland, in College Park, Maryland. In addition to maintaining the combined archives of the SBN and supporting the SBN web site, the Comet subnode collects, formats, verifies and consults on datasets concerned with comet observations as well as providing support for active comet missions and observing campaigns.

Asteroid/Dust Subnode

The Asteroid/Dust Subnode is located at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. The Asteroid subnode collects, formats, verifies and reviews ground based and mission data pertaining to asteroids, transneptunians, small planetary satellites and interplanetary dust.

Minor Planet Center (MPC)

The Minor Planet Center is the international clearing house for positional observations of minor planets (asteroids and comets) designated by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is managed by NASA Planetary Data System's Small Bodies Node as a functional sub-node.

Node Activities

coordinating the creation and archiving of data from coordinated observing campaigns

restoring datasets from past missions

supporting the archive, so that the files are available to the community

assisting users in interpreting the data

Archiving

The Planetary Data System is an archive for planetary datasets past, present and future. It is the goal of the PDS to archive data files with sufficient documentation and ancillary information (flat fields, instrument parameters, ephemeris tables, etc.) that the data will be useful, meaningful and accessible to astronomers in future generations.

Both ground-based and space-based observations are included in the PDS archives, data nodes applying their in-house expertise to each case as needed. Each subnode is staffed by researchers who work with the data and are available for consultation.

Peer Review

An important part of the archiving process is a critical peer review of the candidate datasets. After the data node has formatted the files and gathered all the associated documentation and support files, external reviewers with the appropriate scientific expertise are asked to carefully review the set for completeness and usefulness. The comments and criticisms of the reviewers are noted, and if serious problems or deficiencies are found in the data, the files are not accepted into the archives unless and until the problems are corrected.

You may occasionally come across datasets in these pages that are marked as "Under Review". These are the files which are currently undergoing the review and correction process. Unless otherwise stated, all datasets available through the SBN have passed review.